


The Wrong Card

by shinesurge



Category: Kidd Commander (Webcomic)
Genre: Anxiety, Asthma, Gen, Meanwhiles, Memory Loss, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-06-27 14:50:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15687612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinesurge/pseuds/shinesurge
Summary: The crew encounters something nasty in The Sprawl that leaves Ulrich missing several years' worth of memories.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was something short I wrote just because I wanted to mess around with Noon and Ulrich playing cards together, but as usual it spiraled out of hand. I'd like to go back and finish it someday as a side story, once the canon gets far enough that we actually meet the real versions of the unfortunate cardboard-cutout characters standing in for future crew members. For now it's indefinitely unfinished, but maybe it'll be a good time anyway.

Ulrich scratched his chin and noted that his scruff was getting annoyingly out of hand. His hair was getting too long, too, it would get in the way soon. He let the thought leave him and rested his chin on the heel of his hand, caging his fingers over his mouth and watching as Lucky Noon focused too hard on the array of playing cards in front of them. For Ulrich, they sat at the living room table in a markedly feminine appearance, soft blue curls in a sharp black suit, the fabric starred with glitter. A tiny rhinestone flashed as their manicured finger agitatedly tapped the table.

"Give up?" Ulrich asked. Noon shook their head, of course.

"This is ridiculous, why can't I figure this out?"

"We can try a different one." Ulrich responded patiently. Noon's voice in this projection was clear and musical, but in their distraction with the problem at hand it strayed into a distortion that buzzed in Ulrich's teeth.

"I refuse to admit I can't figure out how a human does a fucking parlor trick."

Ulrich smirked through his fingers and narrowed his eyes behind his glasses.

"This human _is_ very good at fucking parlor tricks."

"Watch that tongue, Liar, I know where you sleep." Their eyes flicked upwards at Ulrich, still an unsettling empty blue even in a human's face. Ulrich had grown much, much more comfortable with the various minor deities he lived with, but looking directly into Noon's eyes still made the back of his head get light. He made no indication of this and shrugged, still smiling.

"Suit yourself."

Noon puzzled a little longer, staring down so intensely that Ulrich was half afraid they would burn holes in his cards. The ship was blessedly devoid of chaos; aside from the constant rumble and hum underfoot as they glided through the air all was fairly quiet. Ulrich unfocused his eyes and breathed deeply while he waited, the sounds of creaking wood and wind whipping by outside settling over his ears like a comforter. It had stormed yesterday and the air blowing in the doorway still smelled like wet and electricity. Yesterday? Yes, yesterday. For certain, because Agatha had been out for most of it.

Finally Noon smashed a fist down on the table, the force entirely disproportionate to the delicate hand that caused it, and they flipped over one of the cards in exasperation. Four bells. Noon threw it at Ulrich, who made no move to catch it as it bounced off his arm

"No one likes a sore loser."

"Fuck you Weiss." Noon stood, fuming, and paced the living room aimlessly as an excuse to get away from the table. Ulrich gathered his cards and shuffled them carefully back into the deck. He'd had this one a very long time, it had been a gift; his memory offered up the giver's identity immediately and Ulrich felt a twist of anxiety he hadn't noticed before leave his belly. He shuffled idly, over and over in uselessly complicated patterns, just moving his hands. He focused on the familiar worn cardstock slipping over his skin. Old tricks he could do without thinking, tricks he'd done hundreds of times, sleight of hand etched eternally into his fingers. Even if the rest of him ever forgot. He spread the deck in a long line on the table then flipped it over.

"You are only conceding because I'm laid-up." Ulrich's tone was conversational but he didn't look at Noon, who had leaned against the kitchen doorway at some point to watch him intently. They folded their arms.

"How is it?" All trace of capricious pettiness had gone in favor of casual curiosity. No concern, which Ulrich appreciated. Noon's concern would be a cause for alarm more than anything else, and they likely knew Ulrich felt this way and were making a deliberate attempt to seem unsympathetic. Lucky Noon was kind in odd ways, but kind nonetheless.

"Better today. Things are coming back to me faster now." Noon nodded curtly.

"Yeah, maybe one or two more days and you'll be good to go."

Ulrich nodded back reflexively. Today had been much easier, although that wasn't a difficult achievement in light of the last week. He thought of his guns and his shoes, their reassuring encumbrance conspicuously absent.

He set up a game of solitaire.

"Do you need anything?" Noon asked. Ulrich realized he'd spaced out again.

"No, I'm fine."

He physically felt the weight of Noon's eyes on him.

"I'm not going to fling myself off the front deck as soon as you look away, you know." He slapped his cards down a little more loudly than necessary. Noon pushed off the doorway and made an exaggerated shrug, their sparkling suit creasing too tightly around the elbows and scattering glitter everywhere.

"I don't give a damn WHAT you do. My orders are to keep an eye on you, not stop you from hurting yourself." They disappeared into the kitchen and began clattering around. "Go ahead 'n fling your grump ass, see if I give a shit."

Ulrich would have rolled his eyes, but in this case he knew it was Phineas' order being so pedantically sidestepped, and he smiled to himself instead.

* * *

A few days before their card game, Ulrich was stalking through a dense purple jungle they'd touched down in, chasing after some damnable trinket for some damnable helpless third party, and he did _not_ want to be here, damn it. This whole sidetrip was a miserable waste of time, even _before_ taking into account his all-encompassing disgust with the jungle and any comparable biomes. Phineas' bright colors bustling along ahead of him clashed against the sickly purple and yellow of the damp foliage. He kept his eyes on her and the landscape looked almost like it was melting in on itself, succumbing to its own acidic blood to smother his idiot friend. She kept getting in a hurry and it was irritating; she had the confident stride of someone who had been cultivated in a place with unchecked woods and dirt roads, but Ulrich knew this alien landscape was not what she knew. She was going to walk right into something unpleasant and _he_ was going to have to clean up her mess.

Ulrich put his foot down in the wrong place and it tore through a webbing of yellow moss, splashing down into a hidden pit of something violet and foul-smelling and _sticky_. He cursed, yanked his foot free where instantly it became covered in leaves and dirt and all the awful detritus of this hellscape. Phineas turned at his voice.

"Ok?" she called, stopped maybe ten yards away. Ulrich was delighted to see that she didn't appear to be enjoying herself either. He dragged his ruined boot on the ground petulantly, only succeeding in attracting more dirt. He reached for his revolver.

"NO I am not OKAY." he complained. Phineas was trying to bite back a fond smile, he could see it from here, and it only made him more angry. He raised his gun and fired toward her with a deceptively sloppy-looking flick of his wrist. She didn't move even as the bullet sang past her head, had learned not to when he did this, and heard something thud just behind her. And keep thudding. Phineas looked in time to see the tail end of an enormous...snake? coming to rest on top of a pile of its own coils. She kicked at it with the toe of her ill-fitting rubber boots, which she'd agreed to wear once she saw what they'd be walking through. Behind her, Ulrich was still throwing a tantrum.

"We don't even KNOW these people!" She still wasn't looking. "Why are we out here wandering in this-"

It had been completely avoidable, he mused after he could be sure he'd make a full recovery. But he'd _never_ admit it had been his fault.

Something seeped unnoticed out of the vile soil at his feet, burning what it touched until a thick white smoke blew around his knees. While Ulrich was focused on Phineas, offended that she was ignoring his fit, it spun and shifted into a face, an avian mask as tall as he was. He sensed it at the last second and faced it just quick enough to watch the apparition disappear from his vision as it dove _through_ him. It was cold, but after having felt the chill of negative matter as it reached inside his throat and stole his soul it was, to be frank, hardly impressive.

He didn't think this just then. He was more distracted by the weight of a weapon in his right hand. He stared at it without recognition, and the thought that he should find out who it belonged to flashed through his mind before someone was shouting and running towards him, a rather unkempt woman in a garish coat. Her eyes were wide with panic and he was immediately on edge. What had frightened her?

* * *

Ulrich didn't like the idea of letting a stranger lead him anywhere, least of all "back to the others", but the options were to navigate an unfamiliar, unsanitary jungle alone with no supplies, or navigate an unfamiliar, unsanitary jungle with someone who looked dirty enough to belong here. He had absolutely no idea what he was doing here (or what the _hell_ had ruined one of his boots), but he wouldn't get information without people. _Someone_ had to know _something_. The woman who had been with him when he...woke, felt right. The woman who had been with him when he woke up in the jungle seemed deeply upset when they met, like something had just happened to him, and he took the opportunity to feign shock until he could better assess the situation. By the time they made it to what he assumed was her camp after a long, silent hike, she seemed furious, taking out her frustration by violently removing anything that crossed their path. A barbarian with pink hair, what a lucky travel companion.

An aircraft like a woodshop project that had fallen down a stairwell hovered near the edge of a small, perfectly circular clearing that seemed like it had been _burned_ into being with an explosion of some kind. Ulrich regarded the ship with absolute apprehension. Pink Hair had insisted he board the thing while they waited for these "others", and after he refused to move too many times she _yelled_ at it. There was no response, but a plain folding chair materialized in the clearing, which Ulrich sat on primly without waiting to be told to. Pink Hair threw up her hands and paced the clearing until three more people had gathered.

While they discussed him, Ulrich sat quietly and did what he always did when he wanted information from stupid strangers.

"What did it _look_ like?" a man in an ugly hat asked him. His face was kind but he kept looking over his shoulder into the edge of the clearing, as if something there was chasing him.

"Please, slowly." Ulrich drawled, wrapping his accent thick around the syllables. Pink Hair scoffed from the other side of the cluster of people and rounded on Ulrich, the others making space for her. Authority figure, he noted dully. They must be barbarians too. Why was he _here?_

"Quit that. Don't lie." she demanded. Ulrich automatically throttled any physical reaction to being caught. She was right in front of him, close enough he could see dirt in the creases of her skin and the lines she sweat through it. He managed to hold her gaze but floundered just a bit at the sudden blazing impulse to kneel.

He realized that she could see through him as easily as he could her, and he also realized that she had nothing to hide from him. With that she morphed into a threat, and although Ulrich didn't know how to use them he considered the weapons at his sides. For one reason or another these people hadn't disarmed him. Change of tactics, then. He stared straight back into her eyes and felt himself slide into a new demeanor that made his shoulders stiffen, his toes flat against the soles of boots he couldn't remember putting on. Neither of them gave.

"Does Bel know I'm here?" he asked clearly. Ulrich wasn't prepared for how easily Pink Hair's hard expression changed to one of genuine confusion, all attempts to intimidate disappearing. THAT made him much more uncomfortable than the aggression had.

"Who?" she asked.

"Why would I be here if you weren't trying to get to Bel?" behind her, one of the others was migrating closer, an enormous figure wearing a pair of aviators and, odd in the suffocating mugginess of the jungle, a dark gray carhartt coat. They loomed ominous and silent over Pink Hair's right shoulder, a halo of blue just glinting through their sunglasses. They settled their body towards her in an unconscious sort of way, and Ulrich wondered if they felt whatever gravity it was that seemed to radiate off of this dirty little imp. Now that he could see better, Ulrich deduced he was looking at an android.

Or, really, an android was looking at _him_ , because he could feel a glare that cut right through tinted lenses. All other movement in the clearing had stopped when they moved. The woman still seemed more confused than anything, apparently not noticing that the atmosphere had turned tangibly tense. Or not caring.

"Is Bel the _florist?_ " she asked finally, neatly derailing Ulrich's train of thought and sailing it straight into the side of a canyon. He opened his mouth to respond, closed it again, cleared his throat. She wasn't lying, he could tell. He tried the android's face, frustrated he couldn't read their expression through their sunglasses, and as if reading his mind they reached up and perched them on top of their head. (She) wasn't glaring at all. She looked _worried_.

Ulrich felt bubbling in his chest, like soda-pop. His throat tightened and he barked a wet, thick cough that tore up from the back of his throat, again, again. An asthma attack, fantastic, perfect timing. He reached for an inhaler that wasn't there and began to wheeze, unable to drag enough air inside his lungs to keep up with his body's frantic attempts to clear his airways. The women in front of him panicked, because that's what stupid people do when someone's own stupid malfunctioning body tries to kill them, and Ulrich was dimly aware of a flurry of activity and yelling from the two others in the clearing with them. Pink Hair grabbed his shoulders roughly. Moron, he thought disjointedly as he tried not to cough right in her face.

"What, what??" her fingers were digging painfully into his shoulders. He fought to suck in enough air to make words she couldn't understand. Pink Hair shook her head frantically as he balled a fist in her shirt, pulling her closer as if proximity could help. He couldn't _believe_ he was going to die here, after everything, suffocating on his own damage. What a fucking joke.

" _What??_ I don't know what to do!!" something was happening near her feet, something was happening with her eyes, Ulrich hallucinated green light arcing through that _ridiculous_ hair and she was drawing breath to speak-

" _Your mask,_ " something blue not-really-whispered into Ulrich's ear. Unthinking, he clumsily slapped a hand to the side of his face. The nearly silent apparition of his stage effect sent smoke over his vision that resolved itself into the shape of an owl, fitted perfectly to his face. There was a bitter scent and he immediately felt his throat relax, the iron in his chest melt, blessed air flooding in again as he drank it down in ugly gasps. Resignedly humiliated, he scrubbed away the drool that had spilled over his lip, still shaking and trying to choke up the last of the bile, and was surprised to feel stubble there. Hadn't he just shaved last night? And, more upsetting, the feathers of his mask seemed to be gone. He touched his fingers unbelievingly to the porcelain, feeling the haphazard grooves and dents in the smooth material. This mask was his, doubtless, but it had no feathers, and it was _old._

Abject, nameless fear condensed in him, blood coloring water.

"For fuck's _sake_ Weiss. _"_ The android hissed, angry in the way someone gets when someone has made them worry. 

Pink Hair looked near tears. Ulrich couldn't tell what sort. He realized he was still clinging to her and snatched his hand away like she'd burned him.

He stared up at them, grateful his eyes were hidden.

"Where am I?" he croaked at last in a voice he hadn't heard himself use in a long time. That he remembered, at least. But what good was that metric?

" _You're home, idiot,_ " the blue sounded in his head again, making his teeth itch. " _now come inside._ "

 


	2. Chapter 2

Phineas had settled into having her own turf _very_ quickly once she'd pulled Lucky Noon into being. She rarely felt out of place to begin with, but she never felt as capable as she did when she could feel the hum of will through wood under her feet. Noon knew this, the two of them bonded as they were, and feeling the distress of their idiot captain at failing to shout an asthma attack into submission they decided to bring their fussy little humankinds inside. The living space beside the kitchen, with its breezy doorway and comfy salvage furniture had been the calming backdrop to its fair share of intense discussions, but this felt tense in a completely different way. The buzzing voices of the jungle fluttered through the orange curtain in the door frame, carried in by a warm, fragrant breeze. Rotten-sweet fruit, like rum, and wet earth. Phineas felt like they’d somehow slipped away to another planet.

Ulrich had refused to board the ship at all when she first brought him back and now she understood why, sitting in a worn-out armchair away from everyone else. This was enemy territory. Something had made Ulrich afraid of the sanctuary she'd so carefully convinced him to relax in over all the time they'd flown together, rebuilt all the walls she'd so painstakingly dismantled. She'd been _right_ _**there**_ and failed to keep one of her own safe, and now he didn't feel safe anywhere. She involuntarily recalled Ulrich recoiling from her in the Last Chance mines after she'd attacked him in a possessed delirium, how his voice was high and terrified when he told her off. The dormant spectre stirred and a maw of impotent outrage stretched in front of her before she could stifle it.

Bitterly she admitted it was completely normal behavior for Ulrich, assuming he really _didn't_ remember any of them. She'd watched him do this hundreds of times, everywhere they went. He positioned himself where he could keep eyes on everybody, always knew where the exits were, how to make his own, his compulsion to plan for contingencies quiet enough that most people never noticed he refused to sit with his back to the rest of the room. But a starship was impossible to plan for. It could be _anything_ , you could walk up twelve flights of stairs into a basement, or out a door you just came through only to step into thin air because the balcony had moved. Boarding a starship was putting complete trust in its captain, and Ulrich never let himself trust anything if he could help it.

That meant, Phineas reasoned, that he was more afraid of whatever was happening to him than he was of what she might do to him. It only made her more furious.

Her crew was sitting at the table across the room, Ulrich alone on the bench nearer the wall and the other three crowded across from him. They'd figured he wouldn't want to be touched, which had been a considerate idea but in practice looked like he was being interrogated. A fifth figure, a dainty little thing in a glittery suit, came back from the kitchen with a mug. The body that was currently Lucky Noon perched on the end of the table and handed the mug to Ulrich, who took it numbly.

"...my favorite." he said, looking up into Noon's face, which looked like it ate something sour and got stuck that way. Noon nodded.

"Just like I watched you make it every morning for the last year." they said, like they were patiently explaining to a child who would need another lecture immediately after the current one. Their voice buzzed like blue neon. "You're up before everyone else because you have nightmares, you come down here and make something hot and burn yourself on it until you can shake off the sleep. Every morning." they smiled, their teeth in this form sparkling and straight and inhumanly sharp. "We don't talk much but it's pleasant. I enjoy it."

Ulrich looked down into the sugar pink froth foaming over the edge of the cup, both of his hands indeed wrapped tightly around it even though it was nearly too hot to hold. Phineas was watching through the gap between Agatha and Gigi. Ulrich looked like he had sunk into himself, the deep shadows under his eyes heavy enough to weigh him down, weary to his bones. Phineas fidgeted in her chair, Mana roiling and furious and screaming for justice; _Somebody_ had touched one of her _things_ and they were just _sitting_ here while Somebody was _out there_ and _still_ _**alive**_. Feeling this way was useless and agonizing when there was nothing to hit. Ulrich's eyes flickered towards her and she froze. She wanted to smile or do something reassuring, anything, but she was only _angry_. Ulrich didn't smile either, but he didn't flinch. Better than nothing, maybe. Ulrich spoke.

"You're in charge aren't you?" Maybe not better than nothing. Brian, still paranoid they hadn't identified what caused this and it might be _on the ship_ and Ulrich might _die_ and _also_ feeling like he was very much in the way, left the table and leaned against the wall by the front door instead. He knew what their spats looked like and didn’t care to stand between them. Phineas sighed heavily through her nose and nodded.

"You were there with me when this happened." Ulrich continued acidly. "And you still can't explain what it was."

"No I can't." Her voice was clipped and crackled with Something Else, ringing pressure in everyone’s ears.

"What _are_ you good for?" Phineas stood up.

Agatha turned in her seat, banged her knees on the table and jarred Noon's position because she was too goddamn tall, and abandoned it altogether, crossing the room and falling heavily down on the couch where she could watch both of them. She slouched way down, shoved her hands in her coat pockets, and slammed her boots deliberately on the cable spool they used for a coffee table, rattling a dish and spoon someone had left out. Gigi, now alone in the middle of the bench, looked nervously between Phineas and Ulrich.

She'd only been on The Noon a month or so and hadn't seen the two of them fight yet, but she'd heard stories from the others. Sometimes they'd argue, loudly and violently, Phineas somehow able to push Ulrich to theatrics and childishness he never allowed himself with anyone else while she laughed it off. No one paid real attention to _that,_ so it must not be the kind of fighting they were referring to. Gigi got the feeling that was just how they coexisted. But she had never seen them argue _quietly_ like this, and she'd certainly never seen Agatha _remove_ herself from an altercation; the android usually undermined Phineas whenever she could, in fact, using her height or strength to show Phineas up when Phineas was bloviating.

Ulrich took a drink, and Gigi took the opportunity to scramble awkwardly to the couch beside Agatha. Noon stayed right where they were, sneering a bit, tapping their teeth with an acrylic nail.

"God, y'all are like siblings." Noon rolled their eyes. Phineas ran a hand through her hair, she hadn't meant to seem aggressive but watching her friends ( _mine_ ) skitter out of the way was telling. Again she felt Ulrich jerk away from her touch, another monster in a cave full of monsters. She shoved her hands in her pockets and reached instead for Noon's steadiness underneath her. They reached back, the circuit siphoning Mana's pressure in Phineas' chest even as Noon’s human-ish projection appeared to be looking elsewhere.

Phineas didn't smile, but she managed not to shout and considered it a victory.

"Nope." she answered. "I couldn’t do shit. I didn’t even see what happened, you just collapsed."

"Am I here of my own will? I can't imagine why I'd agree to be here as part of your crew, as you say. You don't seem particularly capable." Agatha snorted.

"We sent you into the jungle with her specifically _because_ she could juggle taking care of herself and you." she rattled off. Ulrich turned to her, his face unreadable. "You can shoot, and you can lie, and that's about it."

Noon giggled, like shards of glass. Phineas looked entirely deflated. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and saw Mana’s yellow threads spidering across her vision.

"It doesn't matter." she said tiredly. "We need to do something about his memories." Brian tensed and the space around him seemed to contract.

"If we, if we even _can_. It could be any number of things wrong." he chewed his lip. "I wish you could remember what it looked like, at least."

"You all are doing a wonderful job making me _want_ to remember this place." Ulrich quipped. Brian didn't take the bait and only gazed at him sympathetically. Ulrich’s drink finally spilled over the rim of his cup and he flinched as it burned his fingers, making more of a mess. His hands were shaking. Phineas thought she saw his mouth twitch downward for an instant and fury roared back into her chest, sending her hands stimming uselessly into fists. Noon sighed, slid off the table and disappeared into the kitchen.

"How-" Ulrich’s voice actually broke. He swallowed and steadied himself, staring pointedly down at his hands still wrapped around the mug. "How much time have I lost?"

Nobody knew what to tell him. Brian twined two fingers in his hair before he finally spoke.

"Phineas said you were first." he said carefully. "You were the first one she picked up, before any of us, so. So if you don't remember any of-" he gestured vaguely at the room. " _this_ , then that's-"

"No, wait," Gigi cut in gruffly, awkwardness forgotten. "he can't _shoot_ anymore _either_ can he?" she faced Ulrich, who was staring very hard at the holstered weapons hanging by the front door, like he could force them to mean something to him. An uneasy silence hung over the room, broken when Noon returned with a long sheet of paper towels and tried in a half-assed sort of way to clean the spilled dessert off the table.

"When did you learn to use those, Ulrich?" Gigi pressed a little glibly, an interested spark of static electricity drawing her hair outward. "Where did you get them?"

"I," he started. He stopped. He shook his head slowly. "I've never seen those in my life." He faced her and she shrank back against the couch cushions immediately, static dissipating. She'd never seen Ulrich's emotion so plain on his face, it was exceedingly uncomfortable and she felt guilty for prying it out of him. Like she'd walked in on him changing.

“Oh,” she mumbled, not looking at him.

"So you lost _pieces_." Noon guessed, taking Ulrich's hands and ineffectively dragging the towels over them. Ulrich stared at Noon numbly. "Whatever it was took _specific_ things from you." They sat back, setting Ulrich's hands flat on the table, folding them over each other and patting them curtly. "But now how do you figure out what you forgot, huh?"

Ulrich stood abruptly. The room stirred but before anyone thought to catch him he'd crossed to the kitchen doorway, opened the pantry and disappeared down the stairs, the spring-loaded hinges slamming the panel shut with a snap. Noon rolled their eyes again and gingerly picked up the discarded mug, still full.

"I give and I give," they complained, taking a drink. They immediately leaned forward and spat it back out, grimacing.

"Eugh, too sweet."

* * *

Ulrich stopped running when he reached the edge of the clearing, pressed one hand against a tree and tried to catch his breath for a moment, then promptly vomited into the bushel of thorns tangled around its base. This activity completely occupied his time for some several minutes. Not wanting to carry bile around on his handkerchief he finally he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, shaking and heaving but feeling somewhat better. He stared into the violet darkness of the jungle. Night had aggressively fallen while they argued inside, and while bright moonlight easily illuminated the ship's clearing it couldn't break through the thick canopy to light the jungle at all. Ulrich wasn't stupid. Going in there alone and unarmed at _night_ would be suicide.

He looked back towards the ship. It bobbed just slightly in the air and cheerfully puffed white smoke from its stack, and Ulrich was reminded somehow of a dog anticipating a game with its owner. The warm, inviting glow of the interior lights and the stand-by flare of the lighthouse only reminded him he was far from home and achingly alone. The ship hummed, a sub-bass he felt rather than heard, and it vibrated through him like he was hollow. Something nice that wasn't meant for him. He couldn't bear to go back inside. He leaned back against another tree (or something stony that looked tree-like) and slid to the blackened ground, covering his face with his hands and counting out his breaths, trying to throttle his body's succumbing to another wave of despair. How had this happened? He was always so careful, what had gone wrong?

After some time, the sound of heavy footsteps broke through the eerie malaise of the jungle's night chatter. Without looking up he knew it was the android (nobody else who had been in that room could possibly weigh enough to snap through branches like that) and didn't bother acknowledging her. The footsteps stopped a few feet away.

"You got sick." She stated. Her synthetic voice cut sharply through the canvas of natural sound around them. Ulrich considered what might happen if he simply refused to speak to her, but she sat down where she had stopped, getting comfortable. Ulrich turned to her miserably. She was sitting cross legged and staring calmly up into the sky. Cyan outlined the junctures of her body through her clothes in the darkness, the same color as her eyes, pulsing slowly. Without breath, she looked like a statue.

"Can't you people leave me alone?" Ulrich said thickly.

"Not really."

"Why did she send _you?_ " he asked, at the last minute feeling a little guilty about how unkindly he said it. He sort of liked this one.

"Because you like me." she said, deadpan. She shrugged after a moment. "That's what they said anyway. But I dunno what they think I'm supposed to do for you."

Ulrich smiled in spite of himself. The two of them complaining about the others, Phineas in particular, felt familiar. A little bit of the warmth from the windows.

"Are you supposed to bring me back soon?" he asked.

"Man you ARE a mess." she said, remembering to shrug again. Ulrich thought her movements were sluggish, lagging just behind the speech they emphasized as if she had to make an effort for them. "We don't have to do anything. I was just told to make sure you didn't do something stupid and get yourself hurt. We can sit out here in the mud all night if you want."

Ulrich considered it.

"You don't have to come back at all." She was looking at the sky again. Her cooling fans clicked on softly. "Nothing you don't want." she drawled the last bit, like they were someone else's words she was repeating. Ulrich didn't really know how to respond to that.

"Thank you." he offered awkwardly.

"You're welcome." she responded, clearly unaware what she was being thanked for.

They sat like that for a few minutes, the noise of bugs and birds and crawling things thickening the air. He was having a hard time coming up with anything to say, which was an alien feeling he disliked very much. But Agatha seemed to care little about his awkwardness, seemed to have expected it, and the feeling that someone else knew how to deal with his breakdown while he didn't was even less likable. But it was...nice. Somehow. He couldn't let himself _relax_ , obviously, but he wasn't in any immediate danger here at the very least. No more than the usual.

He had no reason to doubt what they were telling him. Despite his petulance earlier, there were too many things that made sense. They _knew_ things about him; his fingerprints were in the ship, he could tell even from the brief dazed moments he'd spent inside. The cutlery in the kitchen was arranged just how he would have arranged it, there had been a basket of strawberries sitting on the counter rather than in the refrigerator. A soft blue rug in front of an electric kettle, exactly where he might stand in the mornings, like Noon had described.

They had let him run, too.

Ulrich let his head clunk back against the tree-thing.

"Do she and I get along?" he asked, not looking at her. Agatha took a moment to mull it over.

"I think you do. Neither of you are the type to stick around anywhere you don't want to." she fiddled with a bright green centipede that had crawled over her knee. "None of us are."

Ulrich thought hard about where he wanted to direct the conversation. He needed to get information, but he was in the frustrating position of not knowing what he had told them about himself. He wasn't sure what he had forgotten, but the things he DID remember told him he had to be very careful about what he let them know. The wrong question could destroy whatever progress he had made towards a goal he wasn't sure of. Or it could...

He eyed Agatha's bare metal forearms, the vastness of the jungle around them. He considered how easy it would be for her to crush his windpipe under one of those heavy footfalls, pictured his neck snapping like another dry branch. Ulrich knew it was very likely he had ulterior motives for being here, and if it turned out he was plotting something against Phineas he could give himself away with the wrong line of inquiry. He remembered how the android had turned towards Phineas instinctively, like a compass drawing to north. How she’d been the first one to defend her in the ship.

The moonlight glared off the glass over the android’s eyes. Painting himself as a threat, amnesia or no, suddenly seemed a phenomenally bad idea.

Begrudgingly, Ulrich decided that he should probably wait before asking anything that could be incriminating. He could spend a little longer in the dark. The all-important desire to stay alive still drew his impetus, whether for himself or someone else he wasn't sure, but he knew in his bones that he still had work to finish and dying wasn't an option. Patience then, yes. He let the silence hang.

Ulrich picked at his shoe absently and realized that something was sticking at his toes. Wonderful, some sort of poisonous nightmare had probably gotten stuck in them when they were hiking through the jungle. He crossed his legs and slid it off his foot, keenly aware of Agatha's eyes on him. Peering inside, in the dim light he found the inside of the boot was a mess of little colored wires, separated from his feet by what looked like a thick piece of waxed paper, maybe plastic. There were metal prongs jutting into the toe space.

"What the hell is all this?" he asked stupidly.

"If you don't know, I definitely don't. None of us know how you do anything, you won't explain it."

Ah. He turned the shoe over carefully to find a round slot carved into the thick sole. If it was stage magic he should probably wait until he was alone to figure it out. He put his boot back on and felt his toes curl instinctively around the prongs, a perfect fit. Naturally. What a mess.

Figuring out which pieces were missing was only making him feel even less sure of himself than before. He knew he was a magician, and understood engineering enough to build....whatever this was, whatever was jangling around in his pockets and whatever the _fuck_ was going on with his hat (he did remember being given his hat and it definitely hadn't been able to do _that)._ He remembered the stage, and Roulette City. He remembered Bel, more than himself now, she would think that was hysterical. He knew the names of his tools and that they were his, mostly, but he couldn't remember using them. He flexed his feet, feeling hidden mechanisms coil silently around him. His body remembered, it seemed.

Thinking of his body was a mistake; the realization he hadn’t slept since the previous afternoon swept over him with a vengeance. He got to his feet and it felt like it took him ten years.

"You ready to go back inside?" Agatha asked. The way she spoke indicated no correct answer; simply a request for information. Ulrich rubbed his eyes.

"I think so."

He could think more in the morning. Whether or not he had any right to it, a proper bed was waiting for him on that ship, and it was infinitely preferable to sleeping in the dirt. His chances of being killed in his sleep were probably about even in either scenario, he figured. At least with this choice he’d have a pillow.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still not really able to move forward with this one, unfortunately, but I wanted to write some Ulrich and Agatha so here's a meandering little bit of stuff.

Agatha was used to waking before everyone else, but it was odd getting all the way through the pigeon maintenance _and_ the garden upkeep without Ulrich appearing in the kitchen. She set the handful of tiny tomatoes she'd harvested on a napkin by the sink, washed her hands, and apprehensively considered the empty galley. The soft yellow bulb over the stove and the dawn twining in through the window were the only light, and they illuminated the unmistakable silhouette of Ulrich's kettle and mug, untouched.

"He's sleeping in." Noon's disembodied voice was a little bird nipping her ear. "He's fine I think."

"Has he ever slept this late?" Agatha didn't need to speak aloud for Noon, so she elected to converse silently. Ulrich not being here broke the routine and made things strange; it felt uncomfortable to break the quiet just now. She closed her eyes against the open space.

"Once or twice. Just when he got his ass beat the day before." Noon chirped. She could hear the curve of a smile in their voice. "Phineas is asleep too. Everyone is right where they should be, the homestead is secure. Relax, lady."

Noon clearly did not understand the extent to which her programming prevented exactly that.

Agatha opened her eyes again, her gaze resting momentarily on the reflection of her own glow in the metal of the sink. Nervous energy bounced off the undersides of her plates, itchy and uncomfortable. Automatically, her body gravitated to the bread box and her hands dug out one of the last precious eclairs, tore it in half and chewed it deliberately. The sugary dough stuck under her tongue, to the roof of her mouth. The morning light rapidly brightened while she engaged in something like a breakfast. She set the other half of the pastry next to Ulrich's mug and wandered back outside to do she-didn't-know-what.

347 seconds later, Ulrich poked his head through the door to survey the garden deck, like he was half sure it wouldn't be there. He jumped when his eyes landed on Agatha, who was scattering bird seed in the grass for a group of tiny mismatched jungle birds. Beaufort and Doldrum, nervous and outnumbered, were settled safe in her scarf.

"O-oh,"

Agatha, reading the flighty uncertainty in his voice, didn't react.

"Good morning." she said evenly.

"...Hi." Ulrich's voice was low and rough with sleep. It also shone with silver, Agatha noted fondly. No, not all fondness. Sympathy? Distress at the apparent extent of his condition; he hadn't accidentally silverspoken in a long time. The glitter that sparked around his throat was pretty, but it lacked the careful scroll structure Agatha had watched him cultivate over their months of traveling together. It hardly registered in her vision before fizzling out, wasted on words with no direction. Distress, yes.

Agatha had lapsed into silence while she puzzled out her feelings, a habit that was awkward for everyone but her. Ulrich fidgeted in the doorway for a moment, his extensive study of social customs leaving him unsure what to do with a robot that had decided to simply Stop. Finally, he managed,

"How does. Breakfast work, here."

* * *

 

Ulrich moves to adjust glasses he isn't wearing, and then he seems to realize something and reaches for his worse ear. Agatha can see the lack of electric waves from his hearing aid and knows already he won't find anything there. She's patient anyway while he runs through his list of fidgets.

"Why are you being so nice to me?" he demands petulantly.

"I can sympathize with your situation." she responds. She turns up the corner of her mouth. "And I do like you, Ulrich." He narrows his eyes.

"Nobody likes me." he says. Agatha has at least three fairly advanced facial recognition algorithms firing off at any given moment, and none of them can tell her whether Ulrich is making a joke or a genuine statement. She shrugs and returns to the overripe fruit on the cutting board.

"Think what you want." she says serenely. Ulrich leans far to the side to try and see what she's doing.

"Are you feeding that to those birds?"

"Yes."

"We're in the middle of the _Sprawl._ Shouldn't we be saving food for _people_?"

"You wanna eat this?" Agatha offers him a square of strawberry so red it's nearly purple. It had barely survived the slicing, more a pile of mush in her hand than the cube she'd attempted.

Ulrich is immediately ready with a snide response but he freezes instead, a cancelled syllable drifting from his mouth. He stares. She'd stripped her hands down to their skeletons to keep the material clean. The wood of the cutting board had already soaked up enough red to look like a murder weapon and Agatha hadn't been interested in trying to get stains out of her hands.

Ulrich remembers himself and blushes furiously, begins fidgeting again, looking anywhere but at her. The staring doesn't bother her as much as the implications of the thing. She turns her back to him again.

"That eclair and the cup are yours." she says. It takes Ulrich a second to find what she means, or, it takes him a second to respond. She doesn't look, finishing her work with the fruit, but she hears him get up. There's a pause, then the sound of a cupboard opening, just the once, then rustling paper. Satisfied, Agatha scoops the strawberry mess into one hand.

"If you want," she calls gently over her shoulder. The rustling stops. "you can come out and sit in the garden while I feed the birds. When you're ready." She doesn't wait for a response.

* * *

 

Agatha was feeding a vulture when Ulrich finally crept out of the doorway. Maybe a vulture, of some kind; it was blue, and nearly bigger than Agatha was even as it hunched almost in half. The bird was perched uncomfortably on the wooden railing, which by all accounts should have splintered apart under its talons, and was delicately trying to catch the strawberry slice from Agatha's open palm. Its beak was not _meant_ for delicate work, and it kept scraping the metal of her hand. Ulrich winced each time at the scraping sound. The sight of the thing had made him instinctively reach to his side, where of course there was nothing, of course, but Agatha seemed as serene as ever so he gripped his mug and waited.

Finally the monstrous thing managed to snap up the fruit, and Ulrich wondered if it could even taste something so small in its huge beak. It squawked happily and flapped its wings, scattering the smaller birds who had gathered at Agatha's feet and sending them back to the thicket. The pigeons in her scarf remained exactly where they were. Agatha reached up and patted the side of its face.

"Good." she stated. "Good little thing." It screamed again and bit her hand, stumbling backwards when its beak clanged harmlessly off her metal.

"Good." she said. Then she waved both hands at it, shooing it off. "That's enough, I don't have anything else for you. Git. Fssht."

Alarmed, it beat its wings twice and was nearly out of sight before Ulrich could tell what had happened. When he looked back, Agatha was staring at him placidly.

"What _was_ that thing?" he asked, closing the door. Agatha shrugged.

"Iunno. It was dumb though, it just wanted a snack."

"We're lucky it didn't want one of _us_ as a snack."

"I would never let a bird eat you Ulrich." Agatha said flatly. Ulrich wasn't sure what to do with that. "That was a joke." Agatha clarified. Ulrich squinted.

"...which, which part is the-"

"Why don't you come sit down." Agatha motioned to a set of wicker furniture sitting in the grass, two chairs facing the stern and a glass-topped table between them. She settled in one without waiting for his response, slid down low and kicked her feet out. A cable spool exactly like the one in the living room manifested beneath her boots as she crossed them, slamming the heels heavily to the wood just as she had the night before. Ulrich elected to seat himself less aggressively.

They were silent for a minute. One of the pigeons perked up out of Agatha's scarf and migrated to her shoulder to stare at Ulrich. He stared back vacantly, lost to his own thoughts, and when he turned back to look into the jungle a bit of the jungle was settled on the arm of his chair.

He started badly enough to spill drink down the front of his t-shirt, squirming away from the turtle that had appeared out of nowhere.

"What's the problem?" Agatha complained.

"What is THIS now?!" he whined. She craned her neck to see what he was cowering from, then she smiled faintly.

"You forgot about her too, huh?"

" _Her?"_ The little face on the little turtle looked up at Ulrich calmly, eyes like shiny black buttons. The aloe leaves sprouting from her back faded to blue near the ends, and they glowed, just faintly emanating what Ulrich assumed was pollen. Poison?!

"She doesn't have a name. It hasn't really felt right to give her one." Now Ulrich looked at Agatha, momentarily forgetting his disgust.

"Does _nothing_ concern you?" Agatha shrugged, like she was seriously considering his question.

"Stuff that's concerning, I guess." she said. "The turtle isn't gonna hurt you."

Ulrich stared back into the thing's eyes. He squinted. He tilted his head to see it better with each eye. He finally shook his head.

"I don't _like_ her." He declared.

"Glad we didn't lose _that_ crucial facet of personality."

"She's..." Ulrich reluctantly settled back into the chair, gripping his cup like a vice. "It feels like she sees too much. What if she's a spy?"

She, The Turtle, unstimulated by this conversation, withdrew into her shell. The glowing spores from her leaves brightened.

"It's okay." Agatha said. She paused long enough for Ulrich to glance up. She had grabbed Beaufort from her shoulder and held him up for Ulrich to inspect. "Beau could take her."

Beaufort pedaled his legs in the air.

"I don't think you're taking me seriously." Ulrich said flatly.

Beaufort made a petulant sound, puffing up his chest and trying to flip around in Agatha's grasp. She set him gently on the table.

They fell silent. The morning sun, dim as it was, was starting to warm up the greenery. The rancid-sweet scent of decay and alien fruit intensified, and Ulrich could hear the sounds of wildlife scuttling around and calling to each other beyond the boundary of scorched earth. He wondered if there were more of those vultures in there. The sky was an unsettling ombre of lavender and yellow but he felt like that was Incorrect somehow. Maybe it would brighten to blue by the afternoon. He couldn't recall what the sky here had been like the day before.

She, The Turtle, was still curled inside her shell but by now her spores had blown into a cozy haze over the garden deck. Ulrich wondered where his inhaler was. He absently brushed his fingertips across his cheek. He thought of worn porcelain, no feathers.

Doldrum nipped gently at Agatha's nose. She closed her eyes and ducked her chin lower into her scarf, listening to the soft bird sounds he made. She hoped the boys liked traveling on the Noon as much as she did; she still worried sometimes that they missed their old coop. Or their friends. It was scary leaving home for unfamiliar places, meeting new people all the time. She scritched the fluff around his neck.

"I'm sorry you don't feel safe." Agatha said, pointedly looking at Doldrum instead of Ulrich. Ulrich tilted his head away from She, The Turtle, just enough to be polite.

"It's okay if you don't trust me, or anybody else here, but I'll do my job and keep you safe anyway. I think I'm pretty good at it."

"Isn't that Phineas' job too?" Ulrich said, after a pause. It was a rude thing to say, disproportionately aggressive to Agatha's sincerity, but his tone was one she'd heard from him many times. He wasn't looking for a fight.

"She is only human." she said, smiling faintly. Doldrum, finally tired of all the attention, fluttered away to comb the lawn for snacks. "Human enough, anyway. I like to think I'm more reliable."

"Besides," she took her feet off the table and planted them in the grass. "I can keep your ass alive either way. I don't think you felt safe here when you _did_ have all your memories, this isn't much different from the usual."

She stood up, towering over Ulrich like a monolith. The sky was brightening rapidly now, and in the light he looked even smaller, paler. She felt a surge of that strange emotion she still didn't have a good name for, that mixture of pity and ravenous, feral protectiveness she felt for the humankinds she lived with. She casually considered burning down the jungle if it might kill the thing that had touched her crew. That wouldn't really be fair to the nice bird she'd met earlier, though.

Oh, she was staring. She nodded at She, The Turtle.

"You should sit out here with her for a while. That stuff she makes is good for you." Ulrich sniffed.

"What _is_ it?" he asked.

Agatha shrugged. She deposited Doldrum on the table and stood up, gently placing two fingers on his head.

"Relax. Doldrum will keep you safe."

Doldrum preened under his wing. Satisfied, Agatha went back inside and left the bunch of them there.

 


End file.
